


iron bands and lipless mouths

by Apricot



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Codependency, Death and Sex, Dreams, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, Obsession, POV Alternating, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Prophecy, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-06 04:57:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13403943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apricot/pseuds/Apricot
Summary: Where Kylo Ren was, where his dark shadow pressed against hers, is hollow and empty. She doesn’t miss it.(She doesn’t.)





	iron bands and lipless mouths

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambiguously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/gifts).



> "And it was Death itself who stood behind me, with his arms wrapped around me as tight as iron bands, and his lipless mouth kissing my neck as if in love. But as well as the horror, I felt a strange longing."
> 
> _—Margaret Atwood_

Rey imagines a path, a bridge across the blackness of space.

It’s easy to form it in her head, especially when she thinks of the look in Kylo Ren’s eyes when she shut the Falcon's hatch. Easy to picture him kneeling at the foot of it, looking up at her. Something painted on his face she didn’t want to name. She was too angry with him to name it. To _care._

At the end of the path, she can feel his presence. Even traveling like hyperspace like this, she can feel him, as if he’s standing on the other side of a door. Waiting.

Having him there, in her head, is the worst kind of weakness. Worse, it’s _dangerous._ The Resistance– what’s left of the Resistance– is counting on her. People who _want_ her help.

So she imagines the path like a living thing, a bridge made of shadows and light and and breath and _need._

And then she imagines it shattering. She severs it, slams down doors of glass and transparisteel and rock, for good measure. In her head she brings down the hatch door of the _Falcon_ again and again, blasts the controls. Fills in the cracks and seals it.

 _It has to be enough,_  she thinks.  It can be done– and she _wills_ it to be so. And it works. She doesn’t feel him again. Doesn’t sense his presence in the back of her mind. Where Kylo Ren was, where his dark shadow _pressed_ against hers, is hollow and empty.

She doesn’t miss it.

_(She doesn’t.)_

***

The bond is dead.

Or it might as well be.

 _Let it die. Let whatever embers remain go out._ It was over, just as good as if he’d struck her down where she’d stood in the throne room, or blasted her into ash above Crait.

_Let it go._

He can’t feel her anymore, see her mind, see anything. She’d done something to sever the connection, putting up walls and barriers, and he’d done the same. Perhaps a little too reluctantly.

 _You cannot afford any more weakness,_ a voice hisses, one that didn’t sound like his own. Snoke was gone, but the remnant of his voice lingers in his thoughts like a stain.

But Kylo’s become somewhat of an expert in betrayal, even to himself. Something in him _clings_ to the shape of her, the barest shadow of the bond. The memory of it. His curiosity, his fascination, and the sheer relief to sense those feelings echoed in her. Maybe only the sensation of someone at his back, of her purpose turned to his.

He doesn’t _want_ to let that go, even if he cannot afford it any longer.  He is the Supreme Leader. There are generals, who doubt his strategies. Allies, who subtly subvert his authority. Sycophants and opportunists, who only want to establish their own footholds in the new pecking order. No one else is there for him. No one else will guide him. He only has himself, and if he lets sentiment and hope poison him, he’ll fall.

He can do this. He _will_ do this. He can pour his will into the First Order and reshape the galaxy, like he was always meant to. So he buries the memory of her at his side, of how his dead name had sounded when given life from her lips– and hollow, desperate, childish desire to rely on anyone but himself. He buries it all so deep he pretends that it’s the same as snuffing it out.

***

The exhilaration of escape doesn’t last very long.

Before it can fully lapse, though, General Organa sets survivors (because that’s what they are now, survivors, not a Resistance) the task of clearing out one of the cargo bays and making it livable. Those with injuries can get treatment, with what limited supplies and skills they have. Anyone able-bodied gets to work hauling equipment.

A few other officers are exempt. They sit with General Organa and pore over star-maps, discuss systems and former allies. Later, the braver ones are dispatched to the Falcon’s cockpit to radio the lingering remnants of the Resistance, kicking up porg feathers and arguing with Chewbacca about sensor arrays. There are scattered Resistance forces, and they need to gather intel on a possible rendezvous point.

Rey talks with the general, giving her the rundown of everything that had happened since she’d left for Ahch-To. The expression on Leia’s face is a mixture of emotion.

“He wouldn’t…” Rey starts, and falters. There’s a waver behind those words that she doesn’t want to identify yet. “Luke was right. What I saw...it wasn’t what I thought.”

The general covers her hands with her own. “He made his own choice, Rey. That’s all we can ever do for ourselves.”

For a moment, there’s deep grief on the general’s face, before it composes itself again. Rey wonders if she will take time for herself to mourn this– mourn Ben, _again–_ in private. But then the grief is pushed away, behind the deep lines around the general’s eyes, and that fiery resolve that Rey can feel through the Force pulses around her like a conduit. “We have an opportunity now, with Snoke’s death. Let’s not lose that.”

The rest of the Resistance– no, the general corrects Connix, when that term is used again– the _Second Rebellion–_ follow their general’s lead. There is mourning to be done. But first, the mission. First, survival.

***

The falling embers have long been put out and the detrus cleared away. Nothing masks the vast transparisteel walls from the openness of space now. It is how it should be. The universe spread across her lap, star systems at her fingertips. Power, unmeasurable, unfathomable power. Power that belonged to her not because of a birthright or heritage but because she had _taken_ it.

But all she feels is that vast emptiness of space. And that she is at the very center of a bruise, the dark heart of a wound in the Force, not enough to contain it. _Not enough, not enough– never enough–_

 _No,_ Rey thinks. She can’t be here. She’s in the cockpit of the _Falcon_. Even with the emptied cargo hold, it hadn’t been designed for more than a few passengers. She had stayed up there to free up one of the cots for the others, making up some excuse to stay up here to keep an eye on the nava computer, which had been temperamental lately.

She isn’t here.

Every nerve of her body strings up, but she still can’t feel his presence. There’s the throne in which she sits, the faint thrum of the ship beneath her, and the terrible vastness of space at her feet. It feels like the cave on Ahch-To, that same despair that crashed over her when she’d realized there was nothing the darkness could show her. No answers.

For a moment the ache is so profound she nearly calls out, reaches for him. But it’s like grasping for a foothold that’s no longer there, her stomach flipping over. And the Force…

The Force is there, but the balance in it is gone. Instead there’s a hunger, a burning, despairing thing, giving power but also _feeding,_ consuming her whole _._ A faint cry reverberates in the still air in front of her, an echo of a word rather than something spoken aloud. She strains to hear it.

_“Rey-”_

_“Rey-”_

_“Rey-”_

“Rey,” Finn says, and Rey wakes. Her body is wound up tight and aches from the position she was sleeping in, and she has to stretch her fingers from how hard they were gripping the arms of the pilot’s chair.

***

They’re back in the snow. He’s fighting her, swinging wildly, off-balance. Her blade takes him in the face, cutting into him just as easily as the rough bark of the tall pines surrounding them, tall trees that she still can’t quite believe are real. Just like before, she knocks him to the ground with a stunned gasp of pain she can _feel_ , as if he’d made it against her skin.

Good.

She wants him to hurt. She wants him to bleed.

She stalks over to him, slowly, and this time nothing stops her. No whispers of light, no flicker of conscience, no ground-shaking canyon that can tear her from her prey.

She falls onto him with a scream and buries that sizzling beam of light into his chest, until the hilt bites into his tunic and she can _hear_ the snow hiss beneath him. He’s still staring at her, at the rage that contorts her features. His expression is more than stunned– it’s _wonder–_ even as the blade eats away the rest of his life.

He slides a hand up, and all she can register is the cold touch of his glove against her equally cold skin, his last breath one word that dances down her spine.

“ _Rey.”_

Kylo Ren wakes up in a sweat, _aching_ , his chest burning and his cock hard as he sucks in sharp, painful gasps.

***

He meditates.

It doesn’t come easy to him. It never had. But he forces his mind to quiet, and thinks about the dream. Thinks about the burning heat of her lightsaber biting into him. Thinks about how he’d been transfixed by her, by her rage and her power and the unbearable brightness of her Force signature above him. How her name had tasted in his mouth even as he took one last gasp.

It has the taste of a vision, of prophecy, and it’s the _lack_ of fear that bothers him the most.

***

A Jedi is supposed to meditate. And she’s used to it– moments of stillness, of quiet. On Jakku, the smartest desert-dwellers avoided the worst parts of the day– hours that the sun was high and the sands were so hot they could blister your feet through your shoes. Metal became searing, and an accidental graze could mean a deadly burn that would fester without expensive bacta patches.

But it’s been _months._ She’s itching for action, impatient, desperate for a mission or for some task that isn’t working on the _Falcon._ Her need for action is bleeding over into irritation now, with the others on the base. Finn– wonderful, friendly Finn– isn’t sure what to make of her warring need for action and, in lieu of that, avoidance of everyone else. She isn’t sure what to make of it, herself. But she isn’t used to the crowds and close confines of the barracks.

She wants to retreat. Fall back from the messy, complicated surroundings and drown herself in a corner, quiet and alone.

It’s at moments like this that she almost turns back to the bond. It lingers, in the back of her mind, like the memory of the cave on Ahch-To, cool and dark. It promises a channel for her frustration, a way to bleed away her restless energy. It promises…

 _No_. Rey opens her eyes. Gets to her feet and heads to the mess hall instead.

The ever-present cluster of soldiers and pilots there are the opposite of what she wants, what she needs, but she grits her teeth and forces herself to ignore it. Food always comes first, when you’re a scavenger, and she lets it override her impulses. There are new recruits every day. The message is getting out, as well as the revived myth of Luke Skywalker. She’s gotten used to a sea of faces she can’t quite catalog, foreign names she tries and fails to remember.

The mess hall is barely four walls and a roof, but at least it’s sealed up tight against the constant rain of their temporary home planet. She grabs a tray.

And then she sees Kylo Ren. It’s only for a second. Her whole body strings up like she’s been pinned, her toes digging into her shoes as if they could make purchase, root into the floor beneath.

 _No._ The Force is a gentle caress of heat against her cheek. It’s the...the _lack_ of disturbance that feels wrong. He isn’t there. There is no echoing dark signature, cold and hot and devouring all at once. There is no warning in her mind. Only the familiar flicker of a life-form that’s just like the dozens of others in this room.

It’s one of the new pilots, inbound from some Core world; it’s no surprise he’s taller and broader than most of the others. His hair is dark, though, and for an instant, despite the Force and her own brush against the steel-and-stone barriers in her mind, she nearly expects him to turn and meet her eyes. To only see her.

But it’s not him.

She makes her muscles unlock, deciding that the hollow stab in her abdomen is only a symptom of hunger mixed with a cocktail of panic and adrenaline and nothing else.

***

They’re on the battlefield. It’s one that they’ve both seen before– but this time, they’re alone among the trees and the snow. The red light of his lightsaber bathes his features, but it’s held loosely now by his side. Hers is a little higher, at hip level, but after a second she cuts the power and steps into his shadow.

The aggression she remembers is gone. Somewhere, back in her mind, she recognizes that the planet is tearing apart beneath them, that they’re standing on the very rock that will soon shatter and they’ll both fall. But she doesn’t care.

Instead, she touches his face.

Rey dreams of touch, sometimes. As she grew older, it turned from innocent– her form pressed softly against someone else’s, hands stroking her hair– to _more_ , dreams that heat and embarrass her by turn. Dreams that leave her hot and aching, shamed and aroused.

His scar is a deep rend over his cheek, under his eye, and she paints over it with her touch, as if she were sketching it out. Part of her itches to redraw that line again, although with her stylus or blade, she isn’t sure. Maybe both.

Maybe over and over again, until it’s cut into his skin to her satisfaction.

It goes down under his collar, far down, and part of her wants to continue to its termination, but instead she lets her fingertips wander to the corner of his mouth.

The Kylo Ren in her dream breathes then, inhaling sharply, and she can feel the surprising heat of his breath against her fingers in the cold as his lips part. For a second she expects him to turn his head, to snarl, to maybe bite down on them, maybe _wants_ that, and her cheeks burn.

He doesn’t.

Instead he goes perfectly still once more, holding in his stolen breath. His eyes are closed. Frozen in place.

Rey dreams of touch. And so she recognizes this fear– desperate fear that any movement beyond this will break the connection, startle one of them into consciousness.

 _No. He’s not really here._ She is the one that doesn’t want to wake yet. There’s a faint rumbling, from the very center of the planet.

She doesn’t know why she does it, but as the canyon erupts, just before they’re both yanked into open space, she presses her mouth to his bottom lip, bathed in red light. A sweet, nearly chaste but for the edge of her teeth, kiss before oblivion.

***

It’s inevitable. No matter how small their forces, no matter what dusty corner of the galaxy they conceal themselves in, the First Order’s reach is ever-growing, lengthening. Sentients are desperate for power and it’s been made clear that the First Order is willing to pay _whatever_ it takes to snuff out the rest of their opposers. They will find them.

They do.

First Order intelligence leads them to the Quelli sector, on the Outer Rim. It’s been months. And it looks like the Resistance hasn’t been wasting time. A handful of Resistance– or Rebel ships, as they were calling their cause now– the ones that had escaped or been elsewhere during the relentless pursuit at D’Qar, and other battle cruisers they hadn’t accounted for– are clustered together in open space.

One of the ships spotted, reportedly, is the Millennium Falcon.

The Supreme Leader _should_ stay in the relative safety of the ship. Should be overseeing the battle from a vantage point. One ship, one target at a time, is below him. He needs to be directing the war, not engaging in battle.

Hux protests, but only half-heartedly. Kylo knows the general wouldn’t kriffing care if he got himself blasted out of the sky– in fact, that would probably be the highlight of the man’s month– and he’s probably gleeful to have been left in charge.

He needs to remember to keep an eye on him. And on the direction from where the fire is coming while he’s out there.

But despite the danger, he doesn’t _care._ He’s exhausted already with months of games and the generals and the strategizing. The moment they entered into Quelli space and he’d sensed the Resistance ships, already scrambling, he’d been moving, striding toward the hangar deck with a barked order.

He wants to _fight._ His way.

The controls feel good in his hands. The drop into space feels even better, the TIE Silencer responding to the faintest press of his fingertips. There’s a clear strategy to destroy these ships before they know what hit them, further damage their resources and moral. He isn’t as interested in that, though. His mind casts out among the screaming TIEs and scrambling fighters, searching, searching…

She’s like a beacon in the middle of space. His mind touches hers, in the same space since Crait, and he seizes on it immediately– nearly abandoning his cover as he takes the Silencer abruptly in that direction. The two escorts are among the best the First Order has to offer, though, and they change direction too and keep up.

His bottom lip stings, as if he’s bitten it in his distraction. He forces the sensation to the back of his mind. He can sense her, but she’s not on his scanners. Not yet. He swings around, trying to get a visual. A Calamarian cruiser is in his way, a fat target sitting momentarily unprotected as its X-Wing detail is diverted by his detail, and he takes the opportunity to swing low, dangerously low. For a moment it looks like he’s on a crash-course with the thing, and he lets himself enjoy the swing of panic in his stomach for just a second before he lets loose and rakes the hull with his laser cannons, simultaneously pulling up–

The _Falcon_ slingshots out of nowhere– no, from underneath the _belly_ of the cruiser, he realizes belatedly– sending a jolt through him. He has to break right hard to avoid a collision, ruining his attack run and sending him spiraling, but he doesn’t even care because her Force signature is suddenly screaming in his head, bright and brilliant and clear. He pivots, letting the Silencer flip from end-to-end in reverse, and then sucks in a breath and gives chase.

The _Falcon_ burns hot above him. He’s faster– he _has_ to be faster– but a combination of her speed and the graceful maneuverability of the ship itself keeps him just half a length away. She weaves in and out of the battle– through debris and dying ships, through laser cannon fire and the burn of the _Falcon’s_ SLAM overdrive. He finds his shot, locks on–

The _Falcon_ dodges, flipping almost in a parody of his spin before it ducks down and loops him. He does the same, not willing to give up his chase so whoever’s manning the gun towers can lock in on _him_ instead. For a dizzying moment, they’re locked together in a breathtaking spin. It feels good, feels _right,_ until he jerks out of it and swings around. The TIE is more maneuverable in close quarters, and so he gets his guns turned on her first, but the _Falcon_ is moving too fast. She shakes him again and he curses under his breath, in frustration and adrenaline, his heart pounding, his blood high. _Rey._

She doesn’t answer him. Instead she dives, nearly flirting with his ship, getting dangerously close– too close for a firing solution. He goes left as she goes right, preventing a collision, and then her next maneuver is as clear in his head as if she’d shown him a holo of it.

He kicks his speed up, dropping like a stone, the TIE screaming in his ears as the ion engines nearly hit red, and misses the hail of laser fire that would have taken him if he’d been a second slower. He sucks in a breath.

_“REN!”_

Hux’s admonishment cuts through and Kylo snarls. “ _What?”_

“Supreme Leader, the rest of the fleet is escaping.” Hux’s words are nearly a hiss. “Their large cruisers have already made the jump to lightspeed–”

His head jerks up.

While he’d been chasing the Falcon, a squadron of X-Wing fighters had jumped into the fray. They were tearing at the Star Destroyers and the rest of Kylo’s fleet. The two TIEs that had been following him were gone– _when?–_ he’d been preoccupied, had they abandoned him or been destroyed?

“Do _not_ let them go!” he spits.

“They’re already gone!” Hux must indeed be at the limit of his patience. “If you’d kindly return, _Supreme Leader,_ we can fall back and pursue–”

His chin jerks in the direction of where he’d last seen the _Falcon._ The ship is already peeling away, and as he watches he senses the hyperdrive engage, sees the white-and-blue burn suddenly streak into lightspeed. Rey’s presence goes dark in his head again.

A distraction.

They’d used her as a _distraction_ , knowing he would go after the _Falcon,_ chase it with everything he’d had while everyone else had slipped away, and their Resistance fighters had torn into the First Order fleet. He’d been _predictable._

His rage burns hot.

***

She’s not in the Falcon, not anymore. Someone is behind her; Rey is running. The rocks below are damp with saltwater and she has to mind them if she’s going to keep her feet. Every so often her purchase threatens to slip, and she can hear ragged breath behind her quicken just a little. He’s gaining. She can feel the anticipation, the excitement that incites his effort as he picks up speed.

She heads down, even though she knows that this path is a dead end. Her legs finally meet open air and she falls, once again, into the pit– cold water shocking her system and nearly filling her lungs before she surfaces and sputters. The cave lip around the pool is near, though, and so she kicks her legs to get close enough to haul herself onto it.

A hand seizes her wrist and she twists away, but he’s already jerking her to him and physics is against her. She sprawls on top of him and knocks him back, her free hand gripping a handful of his tunic, soaked through like hers. He’s so _large_ beneath her. Kylo Ren snarls, already reaching to reverse them, to force her to submit. But she pushes him back hard, her hands on his shoulders, pinning him against the stone floor hard enough that his head knocked against the stone. This is a fight, just like all of the others.

The cave’s darkness was pervasive, the Force a roiling, breathing thing, and she tightens the grip her thighs have around his waist before she kisses him again.

This kiss isn’t anywhere near gentle. It’s a vicious and sharp, but it’s exactly how her body screams for it, at the way the Force envelops them both. Here, there is no balance, and so she pours herself into the darkness that surrounds them, that sings from his own dark signature. She could burn out like this, she would burn out from the inside, but something in him quiets it, swallows the light and brings her back into focus.

His gloved hands are cold on her skin. Her skin is cold too, cold from the water, and  she wants to be warm again. She traces her hands down to his chest, repositioning her hips _just so_ and grinds into him. He gasps, his eyes flicking open as he jerks up, into hers, his lips parting in delicious surprise. It makes her want to do it again, and so she does. This time, he manages to catch himself, gripping her tight in his hands to still her hips, even as his own arch up.

So she snakes tendrils of the Force around his wrists and pins them to the side of his head.

It’s a delicate hold, and he could break it. But he doesn’t, because she immediately sets on him again, a slow, sinuous rhythm that leaves him gasping. He’s hard, the outline of him tangible even through wet leather, and she fits him against her until he presses directly between the heat of her thighs. It makes her gasp, heat stealing through her entire body and she rubs against him to ease it.

They move like that for a while, a tease more than anything. His moans are choked back into his throat, and while she tries to swallow hers at first she decides to do them both a favor and kisses him again to drown it there.

He breathes her name when she finally breaks the kiss, and she likes the shape of it in his mouth enough to let him go. Kylo sits up almost immediately, his hands on her hips again, but this time to meet her rhythm as he thrusts into her and buries his lips against her throat. She’s feverish. She winds her own fingers into his hair, twisting in the strands helplessly. She’s close. Closer than she would have thought, with the frantic beat of his pulse against her skin.

“ _Please,”_ she moans, tightening her thighs against him, rubbing her cheek against his temple.

The orgasm is shallow, not nearly as satisfying as it should be, as it would be if he were inside her. She whimpers. He’s still moving, and so she buries her mouth against his ear, breathing him in, her teeth scraping against his earlobe as she clutches at him.

“ _Ben–”_

He manages a strangled moan before he comes. His body shudders into hers, his grip bruising, but she wants it all and more. She wants to be inside of his skin. She wants him to drown every part of her in him.

Kylo falls back, and she falls over him again, her fist against his chest. But instead of relaxing, his whole body jolts, and he sucks in a sharp breath. She pulls up to look at him.

His face is as pale as death, the expression on it something like stunned surprise. There’s a hole in his chest. She sucks in a sharp breath, unable to make sense of it,  unable to scream as she stares at it, then at his face.

There’s something playing on the corner of his mouth, almost like a smile. He leans up, and the scream manages to work its way halfway up her throat at that. He reaches for her.

“ _Rey.”_

She jerks herself into consciousness.

***

It’s just a dream, she tells herself. A nightmare. She’s been having dreams like this since Crait, since shutting down the bond. Little fragments are all she can remember on waking. Dreams in which he kills her. Ones where she kills him. In some of them– victorious, bloodied, bathed in red and fire– he asks her to surrender. In others– kneeling, head bowed, or his hands clasping hers– he asks her to forget.

In a few– whispered into naked skin, under the cover of darkness, or tasting of salt– he dares ask her to forgive him.

He always asks her not to leave.

Eventually, she always does.

***

Ever since the Quelli sector, where the Resistance slipped from underneath their noses and cost them several Star Destroyers, there's been rumbling in the ranks.

He’s never cared for politicking and glad-handing. But his generals plot now, bickering endlessly, and he’s _tired._ It was easier when he was on the outskirts of this and let Snoke handle it. Snoke had enjoyed the manipulation, playing them off one another. Kylo Ren will likely to put his fist through Hux’s arrogant rat face if he has to listen to the man give another intelligence report in that nasally, droning voice of his.

Anger and rage, forever his allies in his path to power, do not make good attributes in a leader. And Kylo’s anger has always burned hot and uncontrollable, not cold and patient.

_You could have–_

No. No, now was not the time to regret. He’d chosen this path, and there was no way out for him. There wasn’t anyone on his side now, except for the Force.

That should be the only ally he needs.

_(Sometimes, though, Ben thinks that if the Force truly had its way, he would be nothing more than bleached bones and burned meat. He imagines it hollowing him out, burning through him until he is nothing but a husk, limbs bending to its will. The Force, taking up residence inside him, a hive of buzzing sun-wasps in a cage of bone and blood and honey...)_

Enough _._

He will do what he needed to do. He's the Supreme Leader. He _bends_ the galaxy to his will.

He tries not to think of how exhausted the old ambition makes him feel.

***

There are moments of respite, in between the battles. Stolen ones.

This time, she’s lying on her side, her arm draped over his chest, pressed against him. It can’t be possible, because her bed on the Falcon isn’t large enough to support them both. But there’s still the press of his skin and his pulse thudding against her ear. She tries not to like the even rhythm of it, close enough she can concentrate on the tiniest shudder of his skin with every beat.

He’s awake. His fingertips trace slowly down her arm, and she resists the urge to shiver, bury closer to him. She already feels like she’s stealing too much, indulging in this. Betraying herself.

“We’ll find you,” he says, and she frowns, pursing her lips. Rebellion intelligence was reporting the First Order forces massing again. They were planning something, and fear was like a undertow that wound through the entire base. Her anxieties are bleeding over into her dreams, now. “We’ll fight soon.”

“We always fight,” she murmurs, squeezing her eyes shut, trying to block out his voice and this discussion. Except for now. Except for _this._

He doesn’t ask her to surrender, this time. He knows that she’ll keep fighting, and so will he. It’s impossible for it to be any different, when neither of them are willing to compromise. Compromise would be the same as defeat.

 _She will kill him, or he will kill her._ The Force caresses her face. _That’s how this ends._

“How would you want it to happen? If...”

It’s impossible not to know what he means. She’s pressed against him like this, body and mind, and his thoughts are running along the very same vein hers do. Apparently her mind had waited until her guard was down to ask its morbid questions. _How would you want to die?_

She can remember the taste of the dreams she’s had before, where she kills him. She scowls.

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

He goes silent for a second, and then, because even in her dreams he won’t keep his kriffing opinion to himself, he opens his mouth again.

“I want you to do it,” he says, quietly. “When...”

Rey recoils. Physically, mentally, she draws back, her muscles protesting as she leans up and out of his arms, and he releases her, leaning forward a few inches. Something cold washes down over her, drags her under. It’s a thought that is so unlike her, that she recognizes it for what it is, finally: something foreign. Something alien. Something not _hers._

“You aren’t– you aren’t here.” The words are a hiss.

“Neither are you,” he says with a shrug.

Her whole body is trembling. Not only with the first brush of his mind– no, not the first, he must have been in her dreams for months now, she’d been dreaming of him in snatches and fragments for a while, since… _._ since _Crait_ …

She won’t think about that. She refuses to entertain that thought. Or the implication of his words.

His eyes are strange. Glittering. For the first time, Rey senses there’s something else in his head– something he _has_ held back, kept from her. Shards of doubt suddenly pierce her heart. This isn’t some shadow form she’s projected, a sick and desperate manufacture of her subconscious...

Before she can deny it again, he leans in, and presses his mouth to hers softly, so gently she’s shaken once more. Kylo Ren wouldn’t kiss her like this. She wouldn’t kiss him _back_ like this.

His hands grasp her hips, curving her in toward him once more, his tongue hot in her mouth and Rey nearly melts into it before he breaks the kiss, that strange, fierce expression that she can barely recognize and yet finds so familiar on his face again.

“I want you to. If it has to happen, I want it to be you.”

“What do you mean by that? How could you _say_ that–” The idea repulses her so much in that moment, she forgets that they’ve been trying to kill each other since the beginning, that he’s invaded her mind yet again– or that she’s invaded his. But his next words bring her up short.

He leans in once more, his fingertips tracing her jaw. “Because. You care.”

She refuses to let that shatter her. _He wouldn’t think like this. Neither would I._

Still, she feels her stomach twist over, and she shoves him hard. Ben falls back, eyes still on her. The sharp, metallic look in his eyes is gone, and instead his expression is...it’s something she doesn’t want to consider. Resignation. A peculiar softness to his mouth.

“I don’t.” She makes it sound hard. Cold. “I don’t care about you at all.”

But instead of his predictable anger, he nearly _smiles_ , like it just confirms his words. The unexpectedness of it sets her own mouth trembling. Her whole body suddenly feels too heavy, crumbling at the edges. She buries her face back against his chest, breathing in the smell of him– the _smell_ of him, she’s suddenly crazed with the idea that she’s been making all of this up and full of fear that she _hasn’t._ She resists the urge to suddenly catalog it, memorize it, like she’d need the memory later. Her fingernails dig into his chest, not quite breaking skin, but enough that they leave white half-moon indentations where she’s gripping.

When it ended. And it would have to end. His hand slides against her waist, his breath making her rise and fall gently, and slowly her grip relaxes until her palm smooths up, over his heart.

Ben holds her like that until dawn, his pulse steady under her hand, and she wakes.

***

In the end, it all comes down to the two of them, like it was always meant to.

There’s a battle raging above them, around them. The First Order forces are crashing against the Resistance’s, against their new allies. There are men and women dying, starships burning.

He only has eyes for her.

Her lightsaber is already in her hand. She’s built one of her own, _dual_ beams, one lit on each side of the staff handle. Blue light illuminates her face and their surroundings.

“Ben,” she says. Pleads. The note in her voice is wrong, though. She isn’t asking for him to go back. To repent, to find a way back to her side. Her protest is for the course they’ve been set on since they met. She wants him to find an imaginary path that will circumvent what’s going to happen here, now, today.

He can’t, though. He knows that. And...deep down, he doesn’t _want_ that.

His body burns with that familiar rage, with anger, with regret.  “It’s too late, Rey.”

They’ve played this out together before. He doesn’t want to do it again.

So before she can protest, he charges. Commits to the attack, his form and footwork against her natural fluidity and long reach. The air around them tastes of ash and flame.  

It’s so like before, he almost expects to meet the blade of a praetorian guard, to feel her fighting alongside him. Or to have her at his back as well as at his front, defending and attacking all at once. But this isn’t like before. This was always how it was meant to be, in the end.

He pivots, releases himself to the fight. The Force circles him gladly, filling him, his emotions a conduit for the power that flowed through him now like blood, like a heartbeat. He lets it take him.

First blood is his. He manages glancing blow along her thigh and feels it stinging through him like he’d done it to himself. But it does what he wanted it to do– rage, that beautiful rage that flows through her like white light fills her face. She attacks him in earnest, then. Their lightsabers crash into each other as he throws himself into it. Second blood is hers, and then third...and then he loses count as the precision of his attack falters. He swipes hard at her head, and it’s only by a half-second of instinct that she ducks.

Her counterstrike is unexpected. He’s so focused on the graceful parry that he forgets how resourceful she is. She kicks him in the chest, _hard,_ just like she had in the forest and he staggers back.

“Ben–” she tries again, and the words are pleading. His lungs are burning with the effort to get oxygen to his muscles now. They’re nearing the end, and he’s not going to let her falter. He can taste blood in his mouth.

“I won’t stop,” he snarls, his face a wild, feral thing. “I’ll never stop.”

Her face is a picture of heartbreak, and he lets himself feel regret for that. Only for that. But again, it gives her the push he needs. He lunges for her.

Her blade takes him in the chest.

***

Kylo Ren falls.

She feels the burn of the blade as if she’d sunk it into her own ribs, all the air sucked out of her lungs as she goes to her knees next to him, still holding the ignited staff over him as the blade burns through him and into the floor. He takes a breath– tries to, anyway– but all it does is push the blade a little more into him.

She cuts the power and he makes a choked sound.

“ _Ben–”_ she finally gasps, leaning into him.

There’s blood on his mouth. His eyes are dark and wide, that stunned look from her dreams painted over them. _No, no, no._

In Rey’s head, there’s the echo of a small girl screaming.

He reaches for her. This time, she can’t jerk herself awake. She squeezes her eyes shut, hot tears spilling down her face as his hand– warmer than she’d thought– cups her cheek.

“ _Rey,”_ he grates, and the sound is wet. She doesn’t want to open her eyes. Can’t bear to see the expression on his face. “ _Rey.”_

She focuses on anything else. On the warmth of his hand, calloused and familiar. The pressure of his Force signature is like an open maw, a dying star under her fingertips. She refuses to feel it fade in her head, but it’s slowly collapsing in on itself. The Force rushes along her, consuming, shuddering, frenetic energy.

_Balance._

The Force is about balance. This isn’t balance. Her gaze meets his.

“No.”

His eyes are beginning to glaze over, and she sets her jaw, leaning into him as she seizes those tendrils of power in her grasp. Her years alone, her years of survival– they burn through her now. Light side, dark side, his power or hers, and she doesn’t _care._

She pours that power into him, forcing flesh to gather, blood to flow. Scraping away charred flesh and sewing together bone.  

Ben screams.

***

Rey weaves it together. Builds it out of light and shadow, out of peace and rage, pain and joy. Chips away at her shields, throws them open until she can _feel_ him again.

And he’s there. He’s there like he was expecting this, like he was waiting. Still, it steals her breath the first time he appears in her quarters. Ben stares at her, his expression drawn, nearly sallow. She healed him, but not entirely. From the way he’s sitting, he still has to be feeling it.

But his heart is beating again. He’s alive.

For a moment, they just look at each other. And then his angular features crumple. He leans forward, nearly doubled over, a faint tremor along his shoulders.

“ _Why?”_

She breathes out. And inhales again, before she stands. She doesn’t touch him– not yet– but the light of the Force is still pouring off her. Even lightyears away, his familiar presence quiets it.

“Because you don’t get to die,” she says. The words are soft but even, and there’s something so terribly selfish in them that she can’t bring herself to regret. This is hers. _His death_ belongs to her, just like hers belongs to him. “Not until _I_ want it.”

He sucks in a breath.

And this time, when he reaches for her, she goes to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy chocolatebox, ambiguously! Thank you for your lovely prompts. I hope you enjoyed, I had a lot of fun writing it. ♥


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